@whitequark@mastodon.social
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

whitequark

@whitequark@mastodon.social

catgirl shaped object

"A cat is valued for companionship and its ability to kill vermin."

✧ i have friends, and my purpose is to support them ✧
✦ i have enemies, and my purpose is to eliminate them ✦
✶ i have a life, and my purpose is to reach heaven by violence ✶
✷ nothing else matters ✷

#searchable

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whitequark, to random
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

plot twist: the thing you love is the destruction of your mental health, and you went into IT because you were already into self-harm. IT simply provided a convenient, deniable avenue in which to express said need for self-harm
https://mastodon.social/@ErisCaffee@masto.ai/111422968692520948

whitequark,
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

my experience in IT has markedly improved when i stopped putting up with bullshit and knowingly made a few enemies thru choice. i was already suicidal, so the additional risk didn't really register, and the outcome speaks for itself: i am no longer suicidal and i'm pretty okay with my job as it currently goes

whitequark,
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

it did take a few years and some bogus legal threats from an abusive past employer and some other things, but like, you are already into extreme self-harm. what do you have to lose? the illusory stability? the friends you sacrifice everything for while they either tell you to stop in frustration, or turn a blind eye and use your position to their ends?

whitequark, to random
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

ever wanted to find out which microcontroller are you reverse-engineering the firmware for when you don't have the actual device in your hand?

https://asciinema.org/a/EMMyogcUhZ0aMtp3BsD5TAQ1z

whitequark,
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

@krans that it is not really safe to connect a motor to a battery through a switch and hope for the best

whitequark,
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

i came up with this plugin after buying an e-bike, puncturing a tire within 20 minutes of getting out of the shop, then attempting to reverse-engineer any of the three of its firmwares (i did not succeed, but i found out that one of those is for the most disgusting, vile shit imaginable, namely a Renesas MCU)

whitequark,
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

@krans how the fuck would it work without firmware?

whitequark,
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

thinking about cleaning this up and publishing as a Binary Ninja plugin

whitequark,
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

@pa former

cliffle, to random
@cliffle@hachyderm.io avatar

Well, Vinod Khosla's at it again, describing folks like Sam Altman as "people who put everything on the line to challenge the status quo."

I really dislike this rhetoric because it massively inflates the risk that startup employees and investors take on. Nothing about running OpenAI required Altman to put "everything on the line." Was he at risk of imprisonment or brutality? Becoming homeless? Going hungry? I think not.

Startups can be risky jobs, sure, but mostly for employees, not the rich.

whitequark,
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

@cliffle I'll get there ^^ despite the lack of short-term certainty I actually managed to work out a pretty good deal for myself in ways other than the job itself, so I'll be okay, I think

thank you!

whitequark,
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

@cliffle it's especially annoying because some people do bear significant risk. i'm disabled, i'm a refugee, and i went with a startup because that's the offer i had which let me continue to exist in relative peace, by which i mean i now have months of certainty instead of weeks

sam altman does not bear even 1% of that risk

djsundog, to random
@djsundog@toot-lab.reclaim.technology avatar

if we can use normal every day operating systems to virtualize weird operating systems we can use weird operating systems as our daily drivers and virtualize normalcy, just keep it in a little box when we absolutely have to interact with it.

whitequark,
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

@djsundog I used to do this but then I stopped being a shut-in who (literally) doesn't leave the apartment for years and started interacting with most of the world and realized that I am leaning towards using Windows more and more than even my (conventional by this standard) Linux setup

whitequark, to random
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

it is transphobic imo that you cannot just walk into a shop somewhere and buy vacutainers or something

whitequark,
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

@robryk it's a joke. i'm not being serious about it.

whitequark, to random
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

type of girl who bonds with disposable medical equipment

whitequark,
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

@iacore mmm?

whitequark,
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

late night drunk posts after some much needled play with needles o:3

whitequark,
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

being cut or stabbed with needles is a type of intimacy thus far unmarred by any abuse and doesn't give me any flashbacks, only pure joy

whitequark,
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

type of girl who is disposable medical equipment

whitequark, to random
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

me: i am a kbity meow meow
my headmate: I will study hard to enroll in med school in a few years, something that is normal to want and possible to achieve.
me: meow?
my headmate: (takes private lessons from an MD every week at a comparatively breakneck pace despite not even qualifying for entry exams yet)

what the heck

whitequark,
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

@traumaphoenix no, but i think she is holding back on that (seriously)

whitequark,
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

you're supposed to be ineffectually longing for your dreams, not working hard to achieve them!!!

whitequark,
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

she seems to be able to read ECGs now as easily as if they were English.
"it is just signal processing and distributed systems" bro what. these are squiggles on paper. how do you understand what is going on in the meat from them.

whitequark,
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

anyway a lot of the time it feels like i ought to stop trying cause i'll never be as good as she is >.>

i would certainly never even get into med school

(she is also better than me at tech, or most other things)

whitequark, to random
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

me: wants to see my headmate's GPS receiver module in action
headmate: doesn't have an antenna for it
headmate: searches on amazon
headmate: ...
headmate: this [left]
GPS receiver, indoors: [right]

what is this sorcery

image/png

whitequark,
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

@SnoopJ idk 🤍 seems to treat it with no respect whatsoever and that works

whitequark,
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

as long as i'm holding it (like all angel girls it wants to be held in order to work) [headmate: you're giving it a ground plane] it gets a continuous fix indoors, with brick walls and no line of sight with >4 sats

what

whitequark,
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

i can't believe that thing got a cold fix in like, 10 minutes, with a piece of wire torn out of a USB cable for an antenna. what the fuck

whitequark, to random
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

[loud but kind of pleasant] built an internal combustion engine from a kit and got it to run

a tiny 3.5cc displacement internal combustion engine is precariously balanced on the side of a desk, kept in place by two fingers, a thumb keeping the fuel tank from jumping around. a hacked power supply with wires coming from where they shouldn't rests to the right. a Glasgow Interface Explorer is visible in the background, and a 3d printed tool in the foreground after a short pause the engine starts, making loud but soft regular combustion noise. it is a four-stroke engine, so it is quieter and softer than usual. white smoke is coming out of the exhaust pipe. after idling for a while, throttle is adjusted by hand, and the engine revs up twice, before being shut down by a thumb over the air intake

whitequark,
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

@tef this is quite literally the plan

whitequark, to random
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

deleted_by_author

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    whitequark,
    @whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

    @iacore cannot confirm that; i find that sorcery helps a lot, but isn't sufficient in and of itself (as other forms of technology)

    whitequark, to random
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